


Your Life Is On Fire

by hannahrhen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Consensual Kink, Flogging, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, M/M, Masochism, Men of Letters Bunker, Nudity, POV Sam Winchester, Pre-Slash, Season 9ish, Spanking, Sub Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:44:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahrhen/pseuds/hannahrhen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Dean had been wired this way before Hell, Sam didn’t know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junes_discotheque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junes_discotheque/gifts).



> Sooo ... yeah, I got sucked into this fandom. And as my long-time readers know, my method for dipping my toes in the pool is to tie somebody up and lovingly hurt them. What can I say? This is bunkerish, post-Gadreel, pre-Demon!Dean, with liberal hand-waving like I’m conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
> 
>  **A note on pairings** : Wincest is background at best and Sam's feelings aren't particularly sexual in nature, but since he's an enthusiastic participant in the scene and we don't know what's going on in Dean's head, I figured it was better to tag it that way. The focal relationship is Dean and Cas.

If Dean had been wired this way before Hell, Sam didn’t know. And Dean apparently wasn’t gonna tell.

Big, bad, fucked-up Dean Winchester liked to be tied to the bedposts and spanked. Okay, maybe not like that—not like anyone would expect—but Sam’s work fit the bill: Dean on his knees, on the mattress, arms spread wide and bound to each post of the headboard with long pieces of shredded cloth Sam’d found on a storage-room shelf. Something about the rawness of them had worked for his brother, lit his eyes up like Christmas (or a good hunt), in a way that silk ties or handcuffs hadn’t.

He’d gotten really good at tying his brother up just how Dean wanted. Whatever Dean liked to complain about, Sam could follow the damned directions he was given.

So, no—this wasn’t the first time they’d done this.

The first time—the  _first_  time, Sam had just stared at Dean from right inside the doorway, toe aimed backward for quick escape. He hadn’t even wanted to look at the … the  _fucking riding crop_  Dean had fake-casually dropped on the dresser. Dean with his hands on his hips and that fucking look on his face like Sam was slow on the uptake, like he needed to  _get with the program_ , not like Sam’s mind had just been blown by his brother’s request for—

Yeeeaaah. Sam had no idea how long Dean had been wired this way. How long before he’d given in and asked Sam to … give it to him.

Sam would like to say—wants to say—that it took him time to agree, but let’s not kid ourselves. Dean asked just at the right time, when Gadreel was still a broken shard in Sam’s psyche, and goddamn, was he sick of Dean’s shit. The thought of laying into his brother, marking him up enough to remember but not enough to permanently scar … yeah, it fucking worked for Sam those first times. And so anyone would think this was Dean’s way of letting Sam work out his issues, Winchester largesse, but Dean—

When it came to this, Dean wasn’t that fucking generous. What Dean got out of this wasn’t absolution.

So, trial and error, they’d found out this worked: Dean’s knees spread wide in the middle of the mattress, body arched forward, hands gripping the tops of the bedposts where his wrists were securely with round after round of yellowed linen. His back bare, sleek muscle and hollowed backbone making a perfect target of flesh. His old scars and new welts were just templates for what Sam would do to him again and again.

He always started sweating as soon as he was held firm, and the salt would make the lashes sting more (better) when Sam finally got to it.

And Cas was—

Yeah.  _Cas._  He had turned up the very first time Dean had stripped out of his briefs in addition to his jeans, of course. (“Makes it better, Sammy—don’t say you haven’t wanted to beat my ass since we were kids,” and, yeah, but …  _no_ , but … “Goddammit, Dean. Fine.”) Had to find Sam shifting the crop back and forth between his palms just in-between Dean asking for it and demanding it, and Sam had ended up in a fight for air when Castiel had pushed him throat-first into a wall.

“What is this?!” and then, “Hey—hey— _hey_!” and the second was from Dean, talking when Sam couldn’t because of the oxygen deprivation. Dean was pulling on the knots, trying to get loose, and maybe now he would realize how shitty an idea this was, to let himself be helpless with anyone.

_Any_ one.

No matter what buttons it pushed.

Of course, it had been a bitch and a half to explain what they were doing to Cas, whose expression layered every variation of “you humans are completely batshit crazy” ratcheted up to the nth degree.

Cas was at Dean’s head in a moment, putting a hand under his chin and tilting his face up inside the vee of his arms, which had stopped pulling at the knots as soon as Cas stopped actually choking Sam. “You want him to do this to you?” was the quiet question.

“I want it done,” Dean had answered, and wasn’t that—

Huh. Not quite the same thing.

Cas had watched, the first time. Insisted on it when Sam had tried to send him off and Dean had stayed suspiciously quiet. (Uh- _huh_.) So he watched Sam lay stripe after stripe across Dean’s shoulders, down the tender skin around his spine, and paying loving attention to his ass (since he seemed to  _want it done_  so much). Watched the welts cut through the beads of sweat that trailed down from Dean’s hairline. Sat in a chair in the corner of the room, expression frozen, doing that thing where his mouth hangs open a little (“completely batshit crazy,” humans), not visibly reacting to the gasps and hisses Dean made during his whipping. Just clutched the chair’s arms a little tighter when the bed creaked, when Dean’s knees shifted in, and then back out again.

When his back bowed and he groaned, “Yeah, Sammy—like that.”

Sam wondered if Cas could see—or if he somehow just knew—that it made Dean hard. Sam wondered if that was why Dean wanted Cas to stay. Because it hadn’t always made Dean hard, but it was happening more and more.

(Completely batshit crazy. All of them.)

So this was how it was now. Dean didn’t always ask for it—didn’t always want it. When he did, he’d turn up in Sam’s room at night, just after they’d supposedly gone to bed but not late enough that anyone risked sleep, and Sam would get up after just a little snort, maybe a pointed roll of his eyes. But he was never too shitty about it because, “you know, whatever, Dean. Sure.” And so Sam’d follow him down the hall. Find the crop still on the dresser, cloth strips twisted together around it.

And Cas—he knew, too, and, oh, there he’d be. Yessir. Bouncing on the balls of his feet and ready for his own turn.

Got with the fucking program.

Now, here, they watched Dean on the bed and glanced at each other. Sam actually had lost track of whose turn it was. Who would hit, who would watch. And Dean squirmed in the bonds, those thick shoulders twisting as he tried to find a little comfort; knees inching apart as he denied himself even that. Still Sam’s own big brother, Sam’s to take care of, even if he was wired a little—

Yeah, nucking futs. But who in this room could judge?

“You guys gonna flip a coin? I’m not getting any younger.” And his voice cracked a little, and Dean braced himself because he knew what answer he’d just earned himself.

Sam went for the crop as Cas approached the head of the bed. No gentle touch to Dean’s chin this time, no guiding his head to hear a whisper—no, this time Cas dragged fingers through Dean’s hair, gripped, and yanked up.

And Sam couldn’t see Dean’s face, not how Dean reacted when Cas snapped, “Do you really think you’re in a position to give commands, Dean Winchester?” Full-on smiting voice, and, hell, Cas could earn a living doing that.

And there was Dean’s shiver, which Sam definitely could see. Could hear Dean’s little helpless chuckle while Cas was still dragging on his scalp with tight fingers. “No, sir,” Dean said, and there was still a lightness in his voice, a laugh even, and Cas couldn’t hide his soft smile, either, even when he said, “What is it you like to say, Dean? Ah, yes—’shut your cakehole.’” He scrubbed those fingers against Dean’s scalp, rough but fond, something Dean had done to Sam a thousand times, before he let go and stepped back.

“You heard the man,” Cas said, pleased with himself like he always was when he sounded like Dean, and … what the hell. Sam raised the crop.

Nobody here but us bats.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Cas had stopped them halfway through, when Dean clearly still wanted it—wanted more—Sam had been a little pissed. Where that emotion had come from, Sam didn’t—well, yeah, okay, Sam  _knew_. After all, he’d settled eagerly into the role of Dean’s whatever-the-fuck this was, crop in hand and his own muscles burning from whipping Dean just as hard as his brother wanted.

Turned out he could think of a lot of reasons for wanting to whip Dean, and the whole Gadreel bullshit was just one tiny part. Nope, beating his brother didn’t really do it for him—not that way. Didn’t turn him on. But Sam could hardly write off the way Dean’s sweating back and curving spine made Sam’s own stomach flutter.

Being able to inflict the pain Dean asked for was …

Yeah. It didn’t make his dick hard, but it made him hungry in other ways—too much history between them with Sam looking up and Dean putting him down not to get some weird thing out of it.

Satisfaction, fine.

But what Cas got out of it was something else. The first time he had stopped Sam halfway through, when Dean was just starting to break a sweat and pant little sounds at every strike, Sam had opened his mouth to tell Cas to back the fuck off. This had been working just fine without him, and it would go back to—

But Dean had just breathed Cas’ name from between his bound arms as Cas worked at the knots that tethered Dean, kneeling, to the headboard. And Cas hadn’t spared Sam a glance as he said, “Just one moment. Just … just give me a moment.”

And then Cas had been pushing Dean with gentle hands, guiding him to scoot back, still on his knees, and had slid his own body between Dean and the head of the bed. Pushing pillows out of the way and settling onto his own knees as he pulled on Dean’s shaking arms and set them onto Cas’ shoulders.

When Cas said, “Hello, Dean,” familiar, with just a tiny hint of fondness, Dean exhaled on a chuckle.

“Hey, Cas.” And they stayed like that for a minute, quiet, facing each other, Dean’s palms tight on Cas’ shoulders, and then Cas took Dean’s face in his hands and tilted it up just a little.

“I want to see you,” he said, and that was all.

And Sam would have jumped in and pointed out that, hey, what the hell had they been doing for the last couple of weeks but watching Dean, taking turns with the crop and—well, fucking enjoying the view, but Sam wasn’t an idiot. What Cas was doing right now wasn’t just watching.

“Dean,” Sam said, like waving a semaphore flag to get someone’s attention, “you want to keep going?”

And watched his brother’s body shift on the mattress away from Cas, a little. Maybe—probably to keep him from getting hurt by accident. Like Sam didn’t have that kind of control, really. Didn’t know exactly how to land the leather on Dean’s broad back and tender ass without collateral damage.

“Yeah,” Dean said, impatient again, and his voice was soft and cracked. “Yeah, Sammy, do it.”

And after the first—okay, it was the nineteenth, maybe, or twentieth?—strike landed, just over the criss-cross of other marks on Dean’s smooth skin, Dean made another little noise, like a whimper, and Cas’ face …

Oh, Cas’  _face_  …

They never talked about it, outside of the room. Sometimes Sam caught Dean looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and it was obvious Dean was thinking about it. But there had been no heart-to-hearts about “why do you think you deserve to be hurt, Dean” and “were you always this way or is this a new thing?” (Since Purgatory, since Hell, since childhood?) They never talked about the fact that it made Dean hard, especially after—oh, God, yes, especially after Cas started watching them. Whatever Dean thought he deserved, whatever part of his brain turned the burning stripes into hot arousal, that was something Sam let Dean keep to his fucking self.

And Sam? Yeah, the benefits of not having that convo went both ways. Sam might not jerk off to thoughts of flogging his brother, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t think about it. A lot. Didn’t feel his stomach warm into an indefensible contentment at the memories of those last few groans right before Dean told him to stop. (And if he sometimes thought of going further even after Dean asked him to stop? Well, Cas was there for that, too, eyes sharp on Sam before the hesitation even registered. Long before Dean would even know Sam’s hand had tightened on the crop handle instead of letting go. But Cas wouldn’t say a word as they each untied a wrist, keeping Sam’s secret like a priest.)

So, Cas. Who was listening to Dean’s helpless sounds and seeing Dean’s face, which Sam never had. Whose own face was sliding sweet and slow into a glowing kind of awe. Whose small smile betrayed his own pleasure.

Sometimes Sam forgot how much pain and horror Cas had inflicted over the fucking eons.

Forgot that maybe, in some ways, he had liked it. Or maybe—

Hell, maybe it was just  _Dean_.

“Cas,” Dean gasped, and Cas touched Dean’s face again.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he assured, and, yeah, maybe it  _was_  just Dean.

And Sam closed his eyes briefly at Dean’s sob, opened them again to watch Dean’s fingers claw into the round bone of Cas’ shoulders, and Cas didn’t even flinch. His smile just grew that much brighter.

Sam wondered how much longer he’d be a part of this little scene. Could already see the writing on the wall—Dean’s (or maybe Cas’) loopy scrawl of “GTFO” projected clear as anything on a closed door one night. Some part of him would miss it, sure, but right now, with Dean’s hands desperate on Cas, and Cas’ fingers gentle and adoring on Dean—

Yeah, well.

When it came, Sam would get the message.

Until then, he had a job to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm closing this off at two chapters, BUT it may go longer if I'm inspired. Feel free to subscribe if you're interested in updates. And thanks for reading!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [hannahrhen.tumblr.com](http://hannahrhen.tumblr.com).


End file.
